Encyclical Letter "Deus Caritas Est"
Jesus and his disciples. The tendency to avoid the word
eros
, together with the new vision of loveexpressed through the word
agape
, clearly point to something new and distinct about the Christianunderstanding of love. In the critique of Christianity which began with the Enlightenment and grewprogressively more radical, this new element was seen as something thoroughly negative. According toFriedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had poisoned
eros
, which for its part, while not completely succumbing,gradually degenerated into vice.[1]Here the German philosopher was expressing a widely-heldperception: doesn't the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the mostprecious thing in life? Doesn't she blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator's gift offers us ahappiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine?4. But is this the case? Did Christianity really destroy
eros
? Let us take a look at the pre- Christian world.The Greeks—not unlike other cultures—considered
eros
principally as a kind of intoxication, theoverpowering of reason by a “divine madness” which tears man away from his finite existence andenables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supremehappiness. All other powers in heaven and on earth thus appear secondary:
“Omnia vincit amor”
saysVirgil in the
Bucolics
—love conquers all—and he adds: “
et nos cedamus amori”
—let us, too, yield tolove.[2]In the religions, this attitude found expression in fertility cults, part of which was the “sacred”prostitution which flourished in many temples.
Eros
was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowshipwith the Divine.The Old Testament firmly opposed this form of religion, which represents a powerful temptation againstmonotheistic faith, combating it as a perversion of religiosity. But it in no way rejected
eros
as such;rather, it declared war on a warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of
eros
actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it. Indeed, the prostitutes in the temple, who had tobestow this divine intoxication, were not treated as human beings and persons, but simply used as ameans of arousing “divine madness”: far from being goddesses, they were human persons beingexploited. An intoxicated and undisciplined
eros
, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine,but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently,
eros
needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for whichour whole being yearns.5. Two things emerge clearly from this rapid overview of the concept of
eros
past and present. First, thereis a certain relationship between love and the Divine: love promises infinity, eternity—a reality far greaterand totally other than our everyday existence. Yet we have also seen that the way to attain this goal is notsimply by submitting to instinct. Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also passthrough the path of renunciation. Far from rejecting or “poisoning”
eros
, they heal it and restore its truegrandeur.This is due first and foremost to the fact that man is a being made up of body and soul. Man is trulyhimself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of
eros
can be said to be trulyovercome when this unification is achieved. Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh aspertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the otherhand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise losehis greatness. The epicure Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting: “O Soul!” And
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